Japanese for your first hour in Japan: immigration, customs, baggage and the train into town

By the Wabi-Sabi Japanese team · Last updated: July 28, 2026

The first hour in Japan is the one hour of your trip where somebody in a uniform asks you a direct question and then waits for an answer. After that, most of the country can be navigated by pointing, tapping and nodding. So it is worth landing with about six sentences ready — not because the airport is hard, but because being asked something unexpected while jet-lagged and holding a passport in one hand is how people decide, on day one, that they cannot speak any Japanese at all.

The reassuring part: the big airports are among the most English-signposted places in Japan, and immigration officers handle foreign passports all day. You can get from the plane to a train without a word of Japanese. This page is about the moments where a short Japanese answer turns three minutes into thirty seconds — and about the corners of the arrivals hall where nobody is paid to speak English at all: the luggage courier desk, the SIM counter, the man standing beside the ticket machine.

What actually happens between the plane and the arrivals hall?

The running order is the same at every major Japanese airport, and knowing it removes most of the anxiety. First you walk — sometimes for ten minutes, Narita is enormous — and then:

• Quarantine (検疫, ken'eki). Usually a desk you walk straight past.
• Immigration (入国審査, nyuukoku shinsa). The foreign-passport queue. Both index fingers onto a glass pad, eyes up to a small camera, two or three questions, and your landing permission goes into the passport.
• Baggage claim (手荷物受取所). A screen matches flights to belts. Staff often lift bags off and stand them in rows beside it, so before you panic, look at the floor.
• Customs (税関, zeikan). Either an electronic gate that reads a QR code and your passport, or a paper form handed to an officer.
• The arrivals hall. ATMs, exchange, SIM counters, luggage forwarding, ticket desks, and the bus stands outside the doors.

If you registered on Visit Japan Web before flying, keep it open after immigration. You have to show a code again at the customs gate, and travellers who closed the app end up in a corner of the hall with no signal, queueing twice.

What do the signs at a Japanese airport actually say?

All of these are signposted in English as well, so this is not survival information — it is the difference between reading the room and following the crowd. Most of them reappear in train stations for the rest of the trip.

• 到着 (touchaku) — arrivals. 出発 (shuppatsu) is departures.
• 入国審査 (nyuukoku shinsa) — immigration.
• 外国人 (gaikokujin) — foreign nationals. Your queue. The other one says 日本人.
• 手荷物受取所 (tenimotsu uketorijo) — baggage claim.
• 税関 (zeikan) — customs.
• 出口 (deguchi) — exit. 入口 (iriguchi) is the way in.
• 両替 (ryougae) — currency exchange.
• のりば (noriba) — where you board something. バスのりば is the bus stand.
• 券売機 (kenbaiki) — ticket machine. You will meet this word at every station.
• 案内所 (annaijo) — information desk, and the best thing in the building when something has gone wrong.

What do they ask you at customs in Japan?

Immigration wants to know you will leave again. Customs wants to know what is in the bag, and the questions that catch people out are about food. Japan is strict here: meat and meat products are prohibited outright — the leftover sandwich, the jerky in your day bag — and fresh fruit, vegetables and plants are restricted. Nobody arrests a tourist over a snack, but they will take it. Eat it on the plane.

Cash is declarable above a threshold printed on the form itself. Most prescription medicine in personal quantities is fine, and carrying the box with your name on it ends the conversation immediately. The exception catches people out: Japan bans or tightly restricts some drugs that are unremarkable elsewhere, including stimulant medication for ADHD and anything containing pseudoephedrine or codeine, and larger quantities can need permission arranged in advance. If you take something regularly, check the Japanese health ministry's import rules while you are still at home, not at the counter. Being waved toward the side desk is routine sampling, not suspicion.

What do you say when you did not catch the question?

This, not vocabulary, is the real failure mode. A question arrives at speed, you freeze, and the freeze reads as evasive when it is only tiredness. Every line below is a normal thing to say to a Japanese official. Asking someone to repeat themselves is not rude here; standing silently and hoping is just confusing for both of you.

Can I send my suitcase from the airport to my hotel?

Yes, and it is the best-value thing you can do on day one. Every major arrivals hall has a luggage-forwarding counter — 宅配便 (takuhaibin) — run by one of the courier companies. Hand over the suitcase, give them the hotel name and address, pay by size and destination, and it turns up at reception. You get on the train with a day bag instead of wrestling twenty-five kilos through Shinjuku at six in the evening.

Two things nobody mentions. Delivery is usually next day rather than the same evening, so keep a change of clothes and all your medication with you — the mistake people make exactly once. And the counter wants the address in Japanese, which your hotel's own booking page will have; screenshot that version, not the English one.

Where do I get a SIM card and cash at the airport?

Both are in the arrivals hall, and both are worth doing before you leave the building — the counters in town are not open at three in the morning. If you reserved a SIM or a pocket Wi-Fi online you are collecting it rather than buying it, which is a different sentence and a different queue.

Not every Japanese ATM accepts a foreign card, which genuinely surprises people who assume a cash machine is a cash machine. The dependable ones are Seven Bank — inside every 7-Eleven, and at the airport — and Japan Post. Take out more than feels necessary; small restaurants, shrine offices and rural buses still run on cash.

How do I ask which train goes into the city?

The airport station is downstairs from arrivals and signposted the whole way, so you are unlikely to get lost. What is worth knowing before you reach the window: the fast services into town — the Skyliner, the Narita Express, the Haruka from Kansai — are limited express trains, and a limited express needs a second ticket on top of the basic fare. Staff will tell you this. It helps to already understand what they mean rather than assume you are being upsold.

If the last express has gone for the night, or the fare makes you wince, the airport limousine buses run to most major hotels and drop you at the door. Slower, and with a large suitcase considerably less punishing.

What usually goes wrong in the first hour?

• Queueing in the 日本人 line. Check before you commit; the two queues are often side by side.
• Closing the Visit Japan Web app after immigration, then needing it again at the customs gate with no signal.
• Assuming the first ATM will take a foreign card. Find a Seven Bank machine and stop experimenting.
• Landing late and discovering the airport express has finished for the night. Check the last departure before you fly.
• Walking past the courier counter with a suitcase you are about to take onto a rush-hour commuter train.
• Having the hotel address only in an email you cannot open offline.

And if you say nothing at all? You still get through. Officers process thousands of silent, exhausted tourists a week. The difference a few phrases make is not whether you are admitted — it is whether the first hour feels like something happening to you or something you are doing.

None of this needs memorising. Read it once on the plane and let the sequence do the work — knowing that customs comes after baggage, and that the courier counter exists, is worth more than any single sentence. By the time you reach the platform, the hardest conversation of the trip is behind you, and what comes next is a ticket gate, a konbini and a hotel front desk.